Transport and logistics from around the world.

Category: fleet management

picture showing traffic congestion. Source: chron.com
It is an undoubted fact that road transportation plays a notable role in nation building. A well-developed road transportation is a testimony and quality of a developed nation. An industry that has a fleet of vehicles operating within its community or city is a mark of a successful enterprise. In all ramifications, road transportation is important to individuals, an organization or an industry and to a
nation, at large.
In logistics, the importance of road transportation cannot be over-emphasized; an improper management of vehicle fleet has a great negative impact on logistics industry’s productivity as well as the customer service. Since customers are the life wire of any business, hence, poor customer service due to improper fleet management in an organization, a logistics industry or any transport service provider is a bid toward the extinction of such an organization.
Therefore, looking at the factors that can affect the smooth operation of vehicle fleet is a justification for this article. Hence, below are the factors:
1. Congestion: Unnecessary long delay due to traffic congestion will increase
travel time of a vehicle thereby causing a late delivery of goods.
2. Government Policy: Restrictions may be placed on particular trucks to ply a certain road.
3. Increase in Fuel Price: This may cause shortage of fuel thereby affecting the transport smooth operation. It can also increase the cost of transport, therefore, causing low patronage.
4. Poor Fleet Maintenance: This may cause a down-time and this will definitely affect transport operations.
5. Poor Communication: Good and effective communication leads to effective cooperation, understanding obligations and reduce unnecessary mistakes at the work-place. Poor communication, however, proves otherwise to these benefits.

source: mccluskeychevrolet.com
Since April 2008, the United Kingdom Corporate Manslaughter Act was fully enforced on company directors and also the company’s drivers involving any company’s vehicle in any fatal road accident and any other vehicle used for business purposes. The police in the UK have stood their ground to handle any death records from road accident as ‘an unlawful killing’ and ready to deal with the offender or suspect.
The UK Police also have power to sue company directors who fail in their duties to provide frame work and guidance for their drivers to follow at work. It is interesting to note that even the private individual owned vehicles used for transportation business will also be dealt with in the same manner if they are involved in a road accident that causes the death of an innocent citizen. Nevertheless, most preventable accidents that cause the death of innocent road users make it more sensitive to enforce this law with alacrity in the UK. Therefore, under this act, directors and individual transport businesses are expected to ensure that their vehicles are adequately insured and roadworthy.
To this end, adequate fleet management of company vehicles to make our road safer and to enhance transport smooth operations as well as prevent unwanted lawsuits that are likely to arise as a result of fleet related fatality remain the inevitable reasons, among others, for writing this article. Hence, below are possible benefits of fleet management:
1. It lessens the cost of labour: With GPS fleet tracking, you can know your drivers whereabouts thereby making them be accountable to a cause or any assignment given to them.
2. It prevents potential ghost workers: The use of fleet management software
automatically freezes out ghost-workers.
3. It creates perfect contentment for drivers on duty: Proper management of vehicle fleet will surely boost the driver’s efficiency and their confidence when driving on the road.
4. It boosts customers’ satisfaction: Proper management of vehicle fleet makes the organization (transport provider) reliable and committed to satisfying their numerous customers.
5. Proper management of vehicle fleet also increases average lifetime of vehicles, thereby increasing the organizational profitability.
6. Reason for Safety: In transportation, safety comes first; one major essence of fleet management is to ensure that each vehicle is safe for smooth transport operations. It also prevents the vehicle from the chances of being lost or stolen through remote vehicle disabling systems.
7. It improves accountability: Through fleet management systems (FMS), data can be gathered to check drivers’ behavior thereby making them to be committed or
accountable to their actions.
8. It enhances drivers’ safety: When a vehicle is in good condition, it will reduce the accident rate.
9. Fuel management: Fleet management helps to prevent the wasteful use of fuel. In other words, it ensures an efficient use of fuel to complete a particular journey.
10. An efficient management of vehicle fleet by a transport company or transport provider enhances smooth operations of any given industry.

Fleet management system has to do with proper management of an organization’s vehicle fleet. Any organization that has fleet of vehicles and that actually rely on them to carry out their daily operations needs proper vehicle management system such a system is GPS fleet management system. It is a system that helps the organization to locate their vehicles at any time, boosting their productivity, increase drive accountability and reduce fuel usage. In fact, fleet management system can help to reduce vehicles breakdowns. However, here below are the benefits of GPS fleet management system.

It keeps the vehicle on the road through preventive maintenance: One of the important benefits of GPS fleet management is that it helps the organization to avoid costly down time. Every hour that any organization’s vehicle is out of operation is a big loss to the company. This explains why GPS fleet management is important to any organization that has fleet of vehicles. However, through GPS fleet management a fleet manager can receive text messages or e-mail to remind him when the vehicles are due for preventive maintenance. Early good maintenance enables the company to offer just-in-time delivery services to their prospective customers.

GPS fleet management reduces maintenance costs through early detections: When a technical fault or mechanical fault is detected early enough, this will help the fleet manager to address such little problem ahead of time before it becomes a big problem or lead to many other problems. This is what GPS fleet management does for you. Instead of you to depend on your drivers to give you information when the alignments are not okay or when the gears are not working properly etc.GPS fleet management system will give you reliable information on the condition of your vehicles how? The system will notify you through email or text message; if the onboard diagnostic code is activated. You will receive diagnostic trouble codes (DTCS) that will identify specific problems of the vehicles. This will surely helps the fleet manager to know exact problems that must be addressed and to make a reasonable decision early enough on the costs in order to avoid unwanted downtime. Once you know what to be fixed, I think it is better in that way than relying on a mechanic to tell you.

It also helps you to monitor your vehicles at any location: GPS fleet management system, also help you to locate your vehicles at any time, hence if there’s a transport demand in a particular area; the fleet manager will have first hand information on the locations of their vehicles and he can assign the close vehicles to carry out the job.

It leads to profit maximization: Through the helps of GPS fleet management system fleet operation cost can be reduced. For instance the system can reduce the no of staff, over time costs, maintenance costs, prevent down time etc. all these benefits will helps a company to maximize profits.

It enhances performances: Since vehicles location can be monitored and the diver whereabouts can be known through GPS, it will enable the manager to plan on how better to assign job to each according to the location between the vehicle and the assignment. This will enable the company to offer quick service delivery.

In addition, when the drives are aware that their whereabouts are known to their superior officer they become more responsible and diligent in their assignments. In other words, it gives room for accountability and efficiency.

It reduces fuel usage and co2 emission with GPS tracking system: Drivers will find it difficult to take the company’s vehicle to an unauthorized location or journey. This will control the unnecessary fuel waste. More so, since unnecessary journey or idling can be eliminated through GPS tracking system, this will surely reduce the amount of carbon emission into the air.

It is used to check unauthorized use of company vehicle: With the help of GPS fleet management. It will be very difficult if not impossible for any driver to use the company’s vehicles for personal gain.

It enhances safety: Proper maintenance of vehicle through the helps of GPS will boost the safety of the vehicle and the drivers. When a vehicle is in good condition it will make the road safer for all the road users. More so, where there’s need for emergency GPS location data can be used to contact the nearest emergency unit for assistance.

Customer service: With GPS real-time vehicles tracking data may be used to confirm driver delivery and the time spent. Goods can also be monitored in transits just to ensure that customer goods are delivered in time.

It reduces insurance costs and liability: When the company’s fleet are in good condition and the driver’s behavior can also be checked. This will reduce the accidents rate.

It discourages robbery/stealing: Installation of GPS device gives you opportunity to know your vehicle’s location any time, therefore, when a thief knows that the location of the vehicles he steals is known he will think twice before he steals and even if it is stolen, you will not have any problem to locate your vehicle.

It reduces a lot of paper work and also prevent unnecessary mistake that may occur due to lot of paper work. GPS has automated features that save time and it is also reliable.

It can give higher resale value: One of the benefits of GPS fleet management system is that, it can give detail information on the condition of the vehicle. In other words, it can detect any technical fault early enough and this will help a good manager to ensure that each vehicle that has technical problems is in good condition as early as possible. This will prolong the life cycle of the vehicle and to make such vehicle to have higher resale value.

Reduction in overhead costs: Since, it is a known fact that GPS fleet management system can reduce maintenance cost; in the same vein GPS fleet management system cause reduction in overhead costs. The direct costs and indirect cost of managing fleet of vehicles including administrative staff, fuel usage, maintenance costs, among others are reduced with the use of GPS fleet management system.

It prolong the life cycle of equipment: Proper fleet maintenance procedures play an important role to prolong life expectancy of equipment. For instance, if a useful life of an equipment is 12-year, poor maintenance of an equipment may reduce the expectancy to 8-year.

Since, GPS fleet management system has huge benefits, then it will be better and reasonable if organization that has fleet of vehicles or offers transport services to the public use this system in order to enhance their smooth transport operations.

What is fleet management?
Fleet management is a complete management of a company fleet of vehicles. It is meant to cover all aspects of a vehicle life span, i.e. from procurement to the point of disposal.
Fleet management is important to any entrepreneur or a group of people that relies majorly on transportation in their normal business activities. This is because it will enable them to eradicate or minimize the risk that is associated with their transport businesses. Fleet management will enable the company to improve the efficiency and productivity while reducing the total transportation and staff cost. It also ensures high rate of compliance with the law. However, other benefits of fleet management to an organization include the following:

It increases the profit of the company.

It enhances the brand image of the firm.

It also, ensures operations reliability by strengthening the drivers’ skills and reducing the vehicle downtime, thereby, providing standard and quality services for its customers.

It also, keeps and provides proper documentation of the vehicle fleet.

It can also monitoring fleet operations for the firm, this is the utmost basic function in all fleet management system. This has to do with the vehicle tracking component which is usually GPS based.

Who is a fleet manager?
A fleet manager is a person responsible for planning, directing, managing, coordinating and supervising programs for acquisition, assignment, utilization, maintenance, repair, replacement and disposal of fleet vehicles,
However, to achieve maximum fleet operations, it is important for the manager to have a comprehensive and cohesive set of associated parameters that designate whether to retain or eliminate each vehicle or whether it falls into a questionable category that requires further research or maintenance.
He must also ensures that most efficient vehicles are assigned to operations, however, in case, there are other transport operations that must be carried out after the most efficient vehicles have been fully allocated for operations, then the fleet manager is expected to shift to most efficient alternative.
The fleet manager also needs to prepare maintenance schedules for all types of vehicles used for transport operations and he must ensure that the maintenance schedules are strictly adhere to.
He must also ensure or allow adequate and consistent safety inspections, to be carried out on various types of vehicles used for transport operations on weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual bases. He may also, appoint fleet inspection officer who will perform the inspections and explain to him what to do in case of exception to these safety inspections. The manager is also expected to design safety documentations required on the fleet.
In conclusion, fleet management is highly important, most especially to those that rely on transportation in their businesses and those that provide transport services and more importantly, it is one of the major factors to enhance road safety.